Bluebird Rising

by John Decure

  I sheepishly agreed, knowing the punch line was yet to come.

  Then this place opened up two doors down. Word was they did a lot of things you thought you needed a lawyer to do, only way cheaper, and without the lawyer. Customers talked about putting deposits down for family law and bankruptcy filings, name-change applications. They were told the paperwork could take months, but were happy to wait it out at such a bargain rate for services.

  Classic UPL, I was thinking.

  Carpio thought it sounded fishy, but he was never one to argue with customers. Then one day the young girl who sat up front answering phones came in and asked for permission to post a flyer announcing an estate-planning seminar. It sounded interesting, so he went, and liked what he heard: When he died, he could leave his estate to his heirs tax-free.

  The scheme had an alluring ring to it. The Carpios would give their apartment building to a charitable trust, which would sell the property tax-free and use the purchase money to buy an annuity, which would pay the Carpios a cool forty grand a year. Carpio would then buy five hundred thousand dollars in life insurance to be held in a separate trust. That way, when he and his wife died, their heirs would get the full half-million value of the apartment property from the life insurance payoff.

  Carpio’s wife approached with a coffeepot and refilled my cup, which gave her the opportunity to glare at her husband from point-blank range. He reached out and grabbed her hand. “Stay,” he ordered her. Sulking, she parked herself behind his chair.

  The confidence men running the scheme left out a few key facts during their presentation. The cost of the life insurance policy was about thirty-six thousand dollars a year. Subtract that expense from the forty thousand dollars yearly the annuity would pay them, and they were netting only four grand, way short of the thirty thousand a year they saw in profits when they owned the apartment. That property was now owned by the trust, as well, meaning the Carpio’s could no longer sell it if their future expenses unexpectedly spiked.

  “Then, when we know this is bad, we go to a real lawyer my son knows to straighten this out.”

  The wife rolled her eyes. “Ay, Dios mío.”

  The attorney looked over the deal, inquired into the value of their investments, and reviewed their last three income tax filings. Then he told them something they could not believe: Their estate was small enough that it would never have triggered estate taxes when they died. But these people who had sold them the annuities and life insurance had made out very, very well, making fat commissions on both transactions. The lawyer was looking into a lawsuit, but he doubted whether they could ever recover a cent from confidence men like these, even with a legal judgment.

  I knew the attorney was right. Accomplished scammers are experts at hiding their assets.

  “Our lawyer say this happen all the time,” Carpio told me. “Miriam’s cousin, he live in Miami, same thing happen to him two years ago.”

  Mrs. Carpio huffed. “Different plan, but that one, they use annuity and life insurance, too. We wish they tell us before he … before we do this thing.” Her husband reaching up to take her hand.

  “But they were ashamed,” Carpio said. “I can understand.”

  A new wave of customers stepped in off Brand, perusing the pastry case, and both the Carpios seemed relieved at the sight. “Don’t ever sell this place,” I said. “It’s a gold mine.”

  Mr. Carpio asked me to come see them again anytime. I asked if I could keep the flyers and he said take them, please. I got up, promising to be in touch if I found out anything about the scammers two doors down. Mrs. Carpio walked over with a white bag filled with pastries, holding it out in offering. I thanked her, but said it really wasn’t necessary.

  Her black eyes were hard as glass. “I know, if you have a chance, you will do something about this.”

  “Ma’am, I didn’t say that I—”

  “Is not about the money!” she snapped. “Not anymore! You find these people. I hope you get them back. Jus’ … you get them back for what they do.” She saw, over her shoulder, a customer ready to be rung up. “Tha’s all is left to do. You understand?”

  I thought of Albert’s bloody face on the beach, Rudy Kirkmeyer waving at me from the backseat of Bobby Silver’s Cadillac, Monette standing watch as I cleared the pictures off my desk at work.

  “I understand.”

  She handed me the bag of pastries.

  Out of habit, I called my voice mail at work and found that it wasn’t yet disconnected. I wondered if they’d go that far. There was one message, from Skip Greuber, the bar manager I’d worked for before Eloise Horton was hired. He said he was shocked at what they had done today, knew I’d gotten the short end, and wanted to see what he could do to help. He wanted me to call him, which I did. When his secretary asked who was calling, I gave the name Peter Nunn.

  Skip Greuber and I had prosecuted Peter Nunn as co-counsel a few years back. Nunn was behind a statewide insurance-fraud ring that specialized in staged accidents and false medical claims. By the time the trial date rolled around, Nunn had fled to South Africa, where he couldn’t be extradited. South Africa is a fabulous surfing destination. Skip used to ride a longboard way back when, and he and I joked that the bar should have paid our way to go get Nunn and bring him back.

  I had liked working for Skip Greuber.

  “J.?” he said cautiously.

  “No, man, it really is Peter. Guess what? J-Bay is six foot and perfect right now.”

  “You’re quite the comic. But seriously, we need to talk. How about lunch?”

  “I just ate two Cuban sandwiches. But I’ll let you buy me a Coke.”

  I suggested meeting in half an hour at Yang Chow, my favorite restaurant in Chinatown. I might be hungry again by then, so what the hell? A stop there might make it worth my while. The state bar owed me that much.

  Greuber took his time arriving, leaving me waiting at a small table for twenty minutes or so, sipping warm tea in a small ceramic cup. The place was busy as usual, and I felt uncomfortable holding down a table without even ordering. It was a relief to see a Chinese woman half his size leading him back to me. He gave me a major handshake.

  “You’re looking sharp,” he said. I was still wearing my best suit from this morning.

  “What, for having my balls removed with tin snips?”

  Greuber laughed, settling in with a menu. Skip was average in size, with a long face that looked too large for the rest of his body. His dull blond hair was so thin and combed over that it was catching the reflection of outdoor sunshine on Broadway. He pinched at his small mustache in a compulsive way that made me wonder if he was nervous about our meeting.

  “So, what’s good here?” he asked me.

  “The company.”

  “That was pretty slick, J., saying you were Peter Nunn when you called.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t want it known that you were fraternizing with the kind of attorney who gives the agency such a black eye.”

  “Oh, please. You think I don’t know that disciplinary review panel is just the latest dog and pony show?” He put down his menu. “So, is that what we’re doing, fraternizing?”

  Skip was a skilled lawyer who chafed at the bureaucratic bullshit the bar threw at him. He dabbled heavily in investments and stock market trading, his stated goal to retire at fifty, which for him was three years off. I knew he wasn’t fond of his work, but still, he was management, and I wasn’t comfortable spilling my guts.

  “You tell me,” I said.

  Skip told me he was concerned that people would wreck my career, make me a scapegoat just to have the bar look better. I couldn’t exactly disagree. He asked me about the law center. I told him the business about my monitoring Dale Bleeker’s probation, Bobby Silver’s reinstatement hearing, the fire. Nothing he wouldn’t already know.

  “What were you doing out there when the place caught on fire?” Skip asked.

  “Just trying to follow up on the Bleeker thing,”
I lied. “Talk to the office manager, see how many cases had his name on them, what could be done to take care of those clients. Obviously, that didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah. Obviously.”

  A thin young Asian man in a pressed white shirt appeared with a pad and pen. Skip let me do the ordering. I put us down for two plates of slippery shrimp—their specialty—the equally fabulous pork with green beans, and a side of steamed rice. The waiter poured more tea into our cups before retreating to the kitchen.

  “Look, man,” he said. “You may need some help navigating.”

  “Maybe.”

  He glanced both ways. “Anything I can do in the meantime, just call.”

  I wanted to ask for permission to use a bar investigator to look into a growing list of questions I had, such as who owned the law center and whose name was on the office’s lease. Who was behind these seminars? Who ran Capitol Consolidators and Homeowners Fidelity Trust? But I knew that this kind of intervention—the kind I needed—was beyond Skip Greuber’s notion of help. A friendly, supportive word over lunch was one thing. Hanging your managerial ass out on a line to aid a line attorney whose credibility was in question, and doing it three years shy of retirement, well, that was something else.

  “So, what do you say?” Skip asked, gripping his tiny teacup like a shot glass.

  “I say thanks, but I’m not gonna screw up your future, buddy.” He looked disappointed and began to protest, but I held up my teacup to his. “That’s not to say you can’t buy me lunch anytime.”

  He half smiled as our teacups met. “Right. Cheers.”

  Sixteen

  A raw west wind blew off the ocean that afternoon, chopping a head-high swell to pieces. I cruised by the pier parking lot, intent on taking my mind off things with a surf check, and didn’t bother to stop. That is, until I saw Dale and Rudy coming off the pier toward the crosswalk on Main, followed by Carmen, Albert, and Mickey Conlin.

  Carmen saw me first, came over as I rolled down the passenger window. She wore flannel under my navy ski jacket, her black hair tamed by a wool beanie. They had decided to take a walk, having gone a bit stir-crazy earlier from looking after the guys at home. Dale had suggested a stroll on the pier. I asked how Max had missed out on this excursion. Carmen said please, that was just what she needed, more responsibility.

  Mick was hanging back, pondering the watery horizon, posed like a wood carving of some sea captain. He’d stopped by again to look in on Albert, Carmen told me. Yeah, right, I said to myself. I’d heard that one once too many times by now.

  “Hey, buddy,” I called to him. “Did I tell you I’m getting married?”

  Mick stopped cold for a second but recovered and dipped his head so he could spy me through the window, then said: “No! God, I’m so happy for you, J. What’s his name?” He turned to Carmen, raising an eyebrow.

  Carmen dug her hands deeper into the pockets of my ski jacket. “You’re right, I should’ve brought Max. The conversation would’ve been better.”

  Mick came around to the driver’s side and offered an assessment of the surf. “You look closely, there’s a decent west-northwest rolling in under all this chop. Add the leftover wind swell from this gale …”

  “Good size and peaky tomorrow morning?”

  “Good chance.”

  Mick had a light load at his yard, so I leaned on him to join me, and we agreed to go for a paddle early the next day. I offered to give everyone a ride home, but Carmen preferred to walk. Mick peeled off hastily for his repair shop. I’d probably embarrassed him a little with the marriage comment, but so what, he had it coming. He wasn’t the first friend of mine to be sucked into Carmen’s vortex, and he wouldn’t be the last.

  Dale and Rudy crowded in behind Carmen outside my car window. “How’d it go this morning at work?” Dale said.

  “You still gainfully employed?” Carmen asked.

  “Yes and no.” I clammed up after that.

  She looked at me as if slightly wounded. “What, that’s it?”

  I said I’d fill in the details at home, then shut up again.

  The silence felt like a curse. I’d been all set to tell Carmen about the suspension with pay, but I didn’t want to sound too ecstatic because, honestly, I didn’t really need the money. Then again, carrying on as if the bar had just cut me a huge financial break struck me as a shameless, bullshit pose.

  The signal at Ocean and Main changed to red as I pulled away from the curb and rolled up two cars back. My four houseguests passed through the crosswalk on their way home, Carmen leading Albert by the hand, Dale by Rudy’s side, turning their backs to the whipping onshore. I was struck by the urge to call out to Carmen, to tell her we’d talk at home—defuse the tension a bit—and I rolled down my window. Leaned out, but no words came to mind. The light turned green. The guy behind me honked. I dutifully moved through the intersection, feeling the sting of lost opportunity.

  Kimberley Kirkmeyer-Munson called late that night to tell me she’d finally freed her schedule enough to take a morning flight from Seattle the next day. It’s a good thing she did, because if she had stalled any more, I would have let her know where else she could go. She asked me how Rudy was doing and I gave her a report that sounded familiar by now: friendly, benign, and incoherent at times. She paused long enough for me to say, Ms. Munson, you there? then told me she just couldn’t get over how quickly her father had declined, as if she didn’t believe it, even asked to speak to him as if to verify his decline. What did she think, we were kidding? Hell, we love putting up old men with Alzheimer’s. I didn’t fight her, though, because I knew her father needed her. I told her I would gladly have put Rudy on the line to have a semicoherent conversation with her, let her make her own conclusions, but it was ten-thirty and he was in bed asleep already. She could see for herself tomorrow. The last thing Kimberley did was thank me, telling me how she trusted my judgment. It sounded like a line.

  Albert had another punch-out nightmare that night, waking up shrieking and stammering and calling for his sister in the dark. S-s-stop hitting! I d-d-didn’t do anything! Carmen! This was the third one since the day at the beach. The sight of Albert sitting there on the bed shaking got me angry all over again. Frustrated, I vowed to tap the guy who slugged him. Bad move. That is not the answer, Carmen scolded me. Then what is? I shot back. After that exchange we both went silent. It took a half hour for her to soothe and cajole Albert back to sleep. I stayed up, sat right by her side, held her hand, and told her I was here for her. Got no response.

  The next morning’s dawn patrol with Mick paid off nicely, and on first view from the berm, I felt better about luring him away from the yard for a few. Beefy overhead peaks churned and spit for shore. The wind was nil, the wave faces satin smooth. Nobody out at first light. We rode for an hour on Southside, the bigger sets pushing ten feet, but the rising tide eventually swamped the surf with lines of rippling backwash, so we came in, walked up the beach, and paddled back out under the pier on Northside. The surf there was smaller than Southside, as usual, but the tide wasn’t hurting the shape, and the crowd was lighter than expected. We soon found out why.

  The best peak just north of the pilings had only five or six regulars on it. The only faces I didn’t recognize were farther up the beach, away from the pier. At least one local congratulated me on helping clear the water of kooks. How’s that again? I asked. By dealing with those imitators in the parking lot. I tried to explain that it wasn’t that way but was winked off, as if I had to be joking. Mick fared even worse. His return to the lineup, coupled with the incident last week, was apparently being lauded as a virtual act of aggression toward anyone not from Christianitos, as if he was skulking around not to line up the shifting swells but to run off interlopers. Mick was pissed, and he paddled away from the pier and surfed alone until he cooled off.

  Later in the morning I rode a long right straight toward the pier and kicked out well inside, just off the small cement seawall that runs about twen
ty yards out into the surf along the edge of the pilings. Someone had painted a crude skull and crossbones, along with the message: “If you don’t live here, don’t surf here.” The classic locals-only cliché.

  The creeping high tide improved the surf steadily all morning, and slowly we shook off the grimness and lost ourselves in the bliss attendant to riding good waves. By eleven my arms quivered like jelly from fatigue and I took a wave in. Mick was already on the beach, sitting in the wet sand near shore and sunning himself with his wet suit peeled down to his waist.

  “Nice wave in, law boy,” he said. “Too bad you look like a cripple with that stance.”

  “Bite me, motor head.”

  Mick picked up his board and we started across the sand for the showers. “Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. Staring up at the parking lot, where fifty yards away, Angie’s boyfriend, Carlito, had just stepped out of a lowered Chevy Impala, three vato loco-type dudes in white tees and pressed chinos piling out behind him, gang tats all around.

  “What, you’re afraid of lowriders?”

  “They’re looking for me. I had a disagreement with the one in the beret last week. His girlfriend is the old guy Rudy’s wife.”

  “They’re the ones after his money?”